Consolidation of informal accounts

[Wm]

This is not a problem with gnc or an accounting problem.

It is a "how to go about this, presuming someone has gone this way 
before" query.

I have an informal account with a local shopkeeper (could be a general 
store or maybe even a bar tab type of account in other countries, hope 
my description below makes things clear).

It works like this

if I purchase something and have cash-in-pocket I pay for it
if I don't have cash-in-pocket it goes on my informal tab / account
if I have cash-in-pocket over any purchase I pay some or all of the tab

this has worked well for years, there is no formal account arrangement 
other than I occasionally get reminded by my shopkeeper or his wife that 
they'd like the balance / tab / account to be lower in which case I get 
some extra cash the next time I visit a machine or supermarket.  There 
are other exchanges that make this a fair deal to all that aren't 
important here.

Now I've explained all that here is my query:

the recording of all the transactions, while the gnc way, does sometimes 
result in 20 transactions in a month split across Expense accounts like

newspapers
coffee/tea
snack
beer
vegetables
yogurt/milk
watch battery
birthday card
etc

so the recording is good, I know I owe my shopkeeper nn-ish so I get 
some extra cash when available and it keeps us both honest.

However, many of the details of happenings 5 years ago don't matter now, 
e.g. the birthday card for someone that shares the same birthday as my 
sister cost less than GBP1 at the time, does it matter now?

A monthly (over n years ago) or weekly (over nn months ago) 
consolidation would be sufficient detail for GAAP purposes.

At the moment I'm thinking of exporting the transactions doing 
unmentionable things to them and importing again

the sum remains the same [1]

However, I can't help thinking someone must have come up against the 
problem of a lot of tiny transactions being consolidated for honest 
accounting purposes before.

[1] hello anyone else that got the music ref

-- 
Wm...